NZ PM Resigns over Secret Clinton Foundation Gift

The role of Australian Government Minister and briefly PM, Jillian Gillard, in doling out hundreds of millions $ has faded from the headlines, not so the case in New Zealnd. Will this revelation shine the spotlight back on the fleecing of the Australian taxpayer via the Gillard Clinton Foundation deals? One can only hope these politicians are brought to justice and treated like any other criminal that has stolen property and abused the post of public office.

It has been revealed that millions of New Zealand taxpayer dollars have been donated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) to Hillary Clinton’s charity, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), a non-profit organisation created from the Clinton Foundation with the stated goal to reduce HIV/AIDs in Africa.

An MFAT spokesman confirmed to the NBR that between January 2010 and June 2016, $7.7 million of taxpayer funds had already been donated and another $6 million was to follow, keeping to a pledge to donate $13.7 million made by the government organisation in 2013.

The big question is, why is our government sending millions of dollars overseas while at the same time cutting funding for crucial services which desperately need the money here in New Zealand?

To fully understand how Clinton charities operate and decide whether a single taxpayer dollar should have been donated, we first need to look at some of the controversies.

Over the past 15 years, the Washington Post can reveal the charities have raised over $2 billion dollars, mainly from big corporates, foreign governments and political donors. Many have called the contributions ‘pay for play’, where powerful donors exchange funds for future political favours. Speeches make up a large part of the revenue stream, with the Clintons earning hundreds of thousands per speech from the likes of big Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs as revealed by WikiLeaks.

Clinton’s charity has confirmed that in 2012, Qatar donated US $1 million to the Clinton Foundation raising a question of ethics after Hillary promised that while she was serving as secretary of the state donations from foreign governments would no longer be accepted due to the potential influence on foreign policy.

It was also been revealed the Clinton charities utilised the devastating Haiti earthquake to implement disaster capitalism, funneling funds into Haiti under the pretense of aid but only for the funds to flow away from the Haitians desperately in need and instead to companies who had made previously large donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Then there is the $145 million ‘pay for play’ contributions made to the Clinton Foundation by shareholders of Canadian company Uranium One, a mining company with concessions in Kazakhstan and the US. Uranium One sought to sell these concessions to the Russians, but the deal had to be approved by a government committee due to the implications to national security.

ACT party member David Seymour commented “In a world where New Zealanders can crowdsource to buy a beach, it’s not clear what role there is for the government to collect taxes and contribute it to a global charity which is more than capable of reaching out and raising its own money.”

In return for the contributions and the extra $500,000 Bill Clinton received in speaking fees from a Russian investment bank, the 20% purchase of US uranium assets by the Russians was approved, knowing this purchase would mean the production of more nuclear weapons against America’s own interests.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative has also had its share of controversy.